Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, No. 359, September 1845

Considerable latitude in the article of language must be allowed to the poet, who presents to us engaged in dialogue two natives of a country where clothes and victuals are nearly unknown. "Rude must they be in speech – and little graced with the set phrase of peace." Churchill was bound to have conceived for them an utterance natural to their condition, as Shakspeare did for Caliban. But over and above the Cockneyisms committed by him, he makes them twaddle like middle-aged men in middle-sized towns, who had passed all their nights in blankets, and all their days in breeches, with as liberal an allowance of food as parish paupers.

"To mock the rigour of this cruel sky,""In all the honours of our ravish'd plaid" —"Unwilling grace the awkward victor's side,"

have here no dramatic propriety we opine – and show the slobberer.

The Satirist betrays the same poverty of invention in the sentiments as in the language of the Swains. They illustrate no concealed character – they reveal no latent truth.

"Rebellion's spring, which through the country ran,Furnished with bitter draughts the steady clan;"

and yet the swains are averse from war, and exclaim —

"Ah! silly swains! to follow war's alarms;Ah! what hath shepherd's life to do with arms?"

And, at the same time, they talk of —

"the Ferrara, too, our nation's pride."

The dialogue is throughout absolutely stupid. You are not made by it either to hate or despise the Swains, nor are you led to laugh at them; but lay down the satire for minute or two, peevishly suspecting that you have been reading arrant nonsense.

You take up the trash again; and, being a Scotsman, you are perhaps not altogether quite so well pleased to find that it suddenly waxes into something very like poetry. The description of the cave had made you wince – why, you knew not; for nothing the least like it ever existed in Scotland, or out of it; and your high cheekbones had tingled. The reprobate can write, you are forced to confess, while Christopher North holds up to your confusion the picture of Famine.

"Thus plain'd the boys, when from her throne of turfWith boils emboss'd, and overgrown with scurf,Vile humours, which, in life's corrupted well,Mix'd at the birth, not abstinence could quell,Pale Famine rear'd the head; her eager eyes,Where hunger ev'n to madness seem'd to rise,Speaking aloud her throes and pangs of heart,Strain'd to get loose, and from their orbs to start.Her hollow cheeks were each a deep sunk cell,Where wretchedness and horror lov'd to dwell:With double rows of useless teeth supply'd,Her mouth from ear to ear extended wide,Which when for want of food her entrails pin'dShe op'd, and, cursing, swallow'd nought but wind:All shrivell'd was her skin; and here and there,Making their way by force, her bones lay bare:Such filthy sight to hide from human viewO'er her foul limbs a tatter'd plaid she threw."'Cease,' cry'd the goddess, 'cease, despairing swains!And from a parent hear what Jove ordains."'Pent in this barren corner of the isle,Where partial Fortune never deign'd to smile,Like Nature's bastards, reaping for our shareWhat was rejected by the lawful heir;Unknown amongst the nations of the earth,Or only known to raise contempt and mirth;Long free, because the race of Roman bravesThought it not worth their while to make us slaves,Then into bondage by that nation broughtWhose ruin we for ages vainly sought,Whom still with unslak'd hate we view, and still,The pow'r of mischief lost, retain the will;Consider'd as the refuse of mankind,A mass till the last moment left behind,Which frugal Nature doubted, as it lay,Whether to stamp with life or throw away;Which, form'd in haste, was planted in this nook,But never enter'd in Creation's book,Branded as traitors, who, for love of gold,Would sell their God, as once their king they sold;Long have we borne this mighty weight of ill,These vile injurious taunts, and bear them still;But times of happier note are now at hand,And the full promise of a better land:There, like the sons of Isr'el, having trodeFor the fix'd term of years ordain'd by God,A barren desert, we shall seize rich plains,Where milk with honey flows, and plenty reigns:With some few natives join'd, some pliant few,Who worship int'rest, and our track pursue;There shall we, tho' the wretched people grieve,Ravage at large, nor ask the owners' leave."'For us the earth shall bring forth her increase;For us the flocks shall wear a golden fleece;Fat beeves shall yield us dainties not our own,And the grape bleed a nectar yet unknown:For our advantage shall their harvests grow,And Scotsmen reap what they disdain'd to sow:For us the sun shall climb the eastern hill;For us the rain shall fall, the dew distil:When to our wishes Nature cannot rise,Art shall be task'd to grant us fresh supplies;His brawny arm shall drudging Labour strain,And for our pleasure suffer daily pain:Trade shall for us exert her utmost pow'rs,Hers all the toil, and all the profit ours:For us the oak shall from his native steepDescend, and fearless travel thro' the deep;The sail of commerce, for our use unfurl'd,Shall waft the treasures of each distant world;For us sublimer heights shall science reach;For us their statesmen plot, their churchmen preach:Their noblest limbs of counsel we'll disjoint,And, mocking, new ones of our own appoint:Devouring War, imprison'd in the north,Shall at our call in horrid pomp break forth;And when, his chariot wheels with thunder hung,Fell Discord braying with her brazen tongue,Death in the van, with Anger, Hate, and Fear,And Desolation stalking in the rear,Revenge, by Justice guided, in his train,He drives inpet'ous o'er the trembling plain,Shall at our bidding quit his lawful prey,And to meek, gentle, gen'rous Peace give way."'Think not, my sons! that this so bless'd estateStands at a distance on the roll of Fate;Already big with hopes of future sway,Ev'n from this cave I scent my destin'd prey.Think not that this dominion o'er a race,Whose former deeds shall Time's last annals grace,In the rough face of peril must be sought,And with the lives of thousands dearly bought:No – fool'd by cunning, by that happy artWhich laughs to scorn the blund'ring hero's heart,Into the snare shall our kind neighbours fall,With open eyes, and fondly give us all."

Alongside of any one of the masterpieces of Dryden or Pope, this, perhaps the most vigorous thing of Churchill's, is seen to be a daub. Yet Cockney connoisseurs still think it a fine picture. When fresh from the easel, it was thus praised by a metropolitan critic: —

"You'll own the great Churchill possesses, I hope,More fancy than Cowley, more numbers than Pope;More strength, too, than Dryden – for, think on what's past,He has not only rivall'd, but beat them at last."

A hearty national prejudice is no bad foundation for a Poem. It implies one great requisite of success – a secure large sympathy. This "trusted home" animates the poet; and a reception, answering to the confidence, awaits the work. Moreover, ungrounded or exaggerated as these depreciations and antipathies are likely to be, they usually spring out of some deep-laid element in the character of those who entertain them, and have thus the vital warmth and strength that feed poetry, and an original truth of nature mixed up amongst fallacies of opinion. Caricatured representation is the proper vehicle. For Censure is then half disarmed, when to her exception, "This is not so," the reply lies upon the face of the performance, "Neither is it offered for true." The hyperbole of the phrase covers the distortion of the thinking. If we are to find fault with Churchill's "Prophecy of Famine," it must be upon some other ground than the injustice or cruelty of the attack upon poor Scotland, or the hardness of the hits delivered, it may be, by a fist gloved in iron.

Who grudges the attack? Not Sawney himself, if it is made in masterly style. A magnanimous combatant, who has the true enthusiasm of the fight, admires the skill of the stroke that threatens him with defeat or death. Spite, malice, aversion, enmity, are not ingratiating demonstrations. Far from it. Ill-will is naturally met with ill-will. But besides that which is unavoidably self-regarding in such a relation of parties, room is open for views of a more general feature, of a more generous complexion. John Bull scowls at Sawney, and makes mouths at his oatmeal diet, with lips to which the memory of his own roast-beef cleaves. The last-mentioned dish is not altogether unknown north of the Tweed. But John Bull knows not the unimaginable fact, or knew it not, for the barrier is now widely broken down. Sawney has humour enough to be amused by the writhing apprehension of dry and lean fare which deforms the well-fed and jocund face of the bacon-bolter.

There is in the description and Amabæan lament of the two gaunt and shivering young Arcadians, and in the cave of the tutelary Goddess, Famine, the intention at least of the picturesque and poetical. The fault is, that the thing has no bringing out or completeness. It is incomposite – as a plan, unintelligible. Are the dramatis personæ, Sawney, Jockey, and the Goddess, with Sawney's love, the whole population of Scotland? Do the two lads, and their sheep, and Famine, occupy the same sole cave which is all the houses in Scotland? Is it a comprehensive Allegory under the guise of a pastoral Idyl? A ground is laid; and it is easy to conceive that a Hogarth in verse, with his stored eye, and that hand mimic and creative, which, by some unmistaken touch of nature, sets upon capricious extravagance the known seal of truth, might have finished a picture which experience itself would have half-believed in spite of its conviction, that never had there been such an hungered race. But such a Hogarth in verse was not Churchill. Upon the ground laid, a Satire might have been made out by such a genius, exaggerated, witty, poetical – pleasing even to the posterity of the victims. But instead of crowded ideas, here are but three or four. This writing does, in fact, not express the national prejudices of South Britain against North Britain. It expresses the zeal of party and of a partizan. One can hardly conceive such an ignorance of Scotland in England, as that a man of ability wishing to traduce and ridicule the country, should sit down contented under such a paucity of mischievous information. He writes under one simple rule – negation. To deny food, to deny clothes, to deny houses, to deny sunshine, grass, rivers even, requires no mental effort of any kind, and is the part of a dunce and an ignoramus. For any thing positive, the Scotch are proud, have high cheekbones, and love brimstone and rebellion. That is the amount of the picture. Famine consoles the two hungry lads who mourn over the Fifteen and the Forty-five, with prophesying the invasion and conquest of England by the Bute Administration – a glorious hope, a national redress, and a private filling of empty purses and stomachs. Churchill was himself poverty-stricken in mind, during the composition of this blunder, to a degree that never befell any true poet.

An Englishman of this day must be puzzled to bring back the time when Scotland was so completely a terra incognita to her sister, as that this rude and unlearned caricature could pass. Indeed, he hardly understands the hate – he to whom prose and verse, from one great hand, and poetry profusedly scattered like flowers all over the soil from another, have made hallowed the land of romance, and of dreams more beautiful than romance, and for whom the words, "Caledonia, stern and wild," mean any thing but repulsion. But one must remember, that poetry was at the time at a low ebb, almost stagnant in England, and that any thing that looked like an image was aprodigy. If Gray and Collins now and then struck the lyre, they stood apart from the prevailing prosaic and common-place tone of the times. An Englishman of to-day knows the name of Home by one of the most popular tragedies on his stage, if not one of the most vigorous, yet amongst modern dramas, one of the most affecting; and he wonders when that name is introduced by Churchill for the purpose of aggravating the contempt of Scotland, represented as a region Bœotian in wit, quite as much as by its atmosphere. He understands by what attraction Collins addressed to Home his "Ode on the Superstitions of the Highlands." Political hatred, the dislike, the indignation, which may have been widely enough diffused through the nation, at the interloping of Scotchmen in the high places of power and emolument – this was the sentiment in the national bosom which gave a meaning to the poem, and found it a reception. Such a sentiment is not scrupulous or critical – it is passionate merely – and asks not the happinesses of humour, wit, fancy, of the graphical and the characteristic. It asks bitter animosity, and vile vituperation, and is satisfied.

The individuality of a nation is curiously made up. The country which they inhabit makes a part of it, the most easily understood. Their manners, customs, and institutions make another part of it, much of which is outward, picturesque, and easily seen. Their history, that which they have done, and that which they have endured, makes a part. And lastly, that which runs through all, rises out of all, animates all, their proper personality, their intellectual and moral character, makes a part – and now you have the whole. We demand of the writer who will, in earnest, paint the people, that he shall know all these things extensively, variously, profoundly. And of the Satirist, who will hold up the nation to dislike and to laughter, that he too shall show he knows them, their defects and their deformities, their crimes and their customs, their sins and their sorrows, their sufferings and their absurdities, their monstrosities and their misfortunes, God's curse or of their own consciences, that may have stricken their country and their condition, and starved the paupers in body and in soul. Such chastisement might be terrible, and not undeserved. But to inflict it, was far beyond the power of poor Charles Churchill.

"Waft me, some Muse, to Tweed's enchanting stream,Where all the little Loves and Graces dream:Where, slowly winding, the dull waters creep,And seem themselves to own the power of sleep;Where on the surface lead, like feathers, swims;There let me bathe my yet unhallow'd limbs,As once a Syrian bathed in Jordan's flood;Wash off my native stains, correct that bloodWhich mutinies at call of English pride,And, deaf to prudence, rolls a patriot tide."

Ay, much the better would he have been of a dip in the Tweed. He was a big, burly fellow; but, though no great swimmer, he would have found it buoyant after a debauch. His native stains, washed off, would, alas! have sadly discoloured the Angler's Delight. Worse than a hundred Sheep-washings. But at one gleam of the showery bow, the waters would have resumed their lustre. He was the last man in the world who ought to have abused brimstone; for his soul had the Itch. A wallow in the sweet mould – the pure mire of Cardronna Mains – on a dropping day, would have been of service to his body, bloated with foul blood. Smeared with that sanative soil, he might have been born again – no more a leper.

"I remember well," says Dr Kippis, "that he dressed his younger son [the son of his wife – not of the mistress for whom he abandoned her] in a Scottish plaid, like a little Highlander, and carried him every where in that garb. The boy being asked by a gentleman with whom I was in company, why he was clothed in such a manner, answered with great vivacity, – 'Sir, my father hates the Scotch, and does it to plague them.'" For a father to dress up his son in the garb of a people, despised and detested with perpetual scunner, seems an odd demonstration either of party spite or of paternal fondness – about as sensible as, on the anniversary of his birth-day, in compliment to his mother, to have dressed him up like a monkey.

The Patriot Satirist! The question inevitably obtrudes itself – what is the pointing of destiny, which singles out Churchill for the indignant protector, in verse, of England's freedom and welfare? What calls his hand into the van of battle, with the strong lance of justice laid in rest, to tilt against the ill-defended breast of poor, proud, hungry, jacobinical, place-loving, coin-attached and coin-attaching, muse-left, gibbet-favoured, tartan-clad, sulphur-scented, and thistle-growing Scotland? The hero of liberty, the self-offered martyr for the rights and the wrongs of a great people, should carry on his front, one might suppose, some evidence of the over-mastering spirit which, like a necessity, finds him out, and throws him, as if a lot-drawn champion, alone into the jaws and jeopardy of the war. It should be one, of whom, if you knew him yet obscure, you might divine and say, "This is his hour —his is the mind that consecrates its possessor to a consecrated cause, that discriminates, essentially as the spirits of light as divided from the spirits of darkness, the lover of his country from the factious partizan, and from the seditious demagogue." There should be a private life and character that but repeat themselves in the public ones, on a bolder and gigantic scale. Else how ready does the apprehension rise, that the professed hostility to unjust men in power is no more than the reluctance of an ill-disciplined spirit, under the offence and constraint of institutions which set superiors over his head, and gall him by bridling an unruly will; – whilst the clamorous zeal for the general good is purely the choice of the staking gamester between red and black, and the preference of the million-headed patron to the cheapener with a few heads or with one. The two known traits, which largely comprehend the private life of Churchill, do not prepossess one in his favour. He left his profession, the church; and he exchanged his wife, after many years' cohabitation, for a mistress; two paramount desecrations unhappily met. And the trumpet-call to the war-field of patriotism sings but uncheeringly, when the blast is winded by the breath of Wilkes.

When the shame of England burns in the heart of Cowper, you must believe him; for through that heart rolled the best of England's blood. But Churchill! Faugh!

1

Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, Esq., R.A. Composed chiefly of his Letters. By C. R. Leslie, R.A. Second Edition. Longmans.

2

Even there we see that he viewed the matter as a task, and piqued himself only on having succeeded in a tour-de-force. Writing to Archdeacon Fisher, he says – "It was the most difficult subject in landscape I ever had on my easel. I have not flinched at the windows, buttresses, &c.; but I have still kept to my grand organ, colour, and have as usual made my escape in the evanescence of chiaroscuro." – (P. 109.)

3

"I cannot but recall here a passage in a letter to Mr Fisher, written by Constable nearly ten years before his death, in which, after speaking of having removed his family to Hampstead, he says, 'I could gladly exclaim, here let me take my everlasting rest!'"

4

One of the greatest and most memorable of the Turkish princes was Mahmood the Ghaznavide, who reigned in the eastern provinces of Persia, A.D. 997-1028. His father, Sebactagi, arose from the condition of a slave to the command of the city and province of Ghazna. In the fall of the dynasty of the Sammanides, the fortune of Mahmood was confirmed. For him the title of sultan (signifying lord and master) was first invented, and his kingdom was enlarged from Transoxiana to the neighbourhood of Ispahan, from the shores of the Caspian to the mouth of the Indus. The prowess and magnificence of Mahmood, his twelve expeditions into Hindostan, and the holy wars he waged against the idol-worship of that country, in one of which he destroyed an image of peculiar sanctity at Diu or Du in Guzerat, and carried off the gates of Somnauth, (so recently, once more, become a trophy of triumph and defeat,) the vast treasures amassed in his campaigns, and the extent and greatness of the Ghaznavide empire, have always been favourite subjects with Eastern historians. The instance of his justice recorded in the verses, is given by Gibbon, from whose history this note is chiefly taken.

Ghazna, from being the emporium of India, and the metropolis of a vast dominion, had almost shrunk from the eye of the geographer, until, under the modified appellation of Ghizni, it again emerged into importance in our Affghan war. A curious crowd of associations is suggested by the fact, that the town which gave its name to a dynasty that shook the successors of Mahomet on their thrones, now confers the dignity of Baron on a native of one of the obscurest villages in Ireland – Lord Keane of Ghizni, and of Cappoquin in the county of Waterford.

5

Kaff of late years is considered to have been more a creation of Eastern mythology, than a genuine incontestable mountain. Its position is supposed to be at the highest point of the great Hindoo-Kosh range. Such was its astonishing altitude, that, says D'Herbelot, "vous trouvez souvent dans leurs anciens livres, pour exprimer le lever du soleil, cette façon de parler, aussitôt que cet astre parût sur la cime du Mont Cáf, le monde fut éclairé de sa lumière: de même pour comprendre toute l'etendue de la terre et de l'eau, ils disent Depuis Cáf à Cáf– c'est à dire, d'une de ses extremités à l'autre."

6

The name of Sind, Attok, or Indus, is applied indifferently to the mighty stream that forms the western boundary of Hindostan.

7

The tribes of savage warriors inhabiting the Kipchak, or table-land of Tartary, have been distinguished by the name of the Golden Hordes. There is a magnificent lyric on their Battle-charge, by Dr Croly, in the Friendship's Offering for 1834.

8

Essays on Natural History, chiefly Ornithology. By Charles Waterton, Esq., author of "Wanderings in South America." Second Series; with a continuation of the Autobiography of the Author.

9

"'I do hereby disclaim, disavow, and solemnly abjure any intention to subvert the present Church Establishment within this realm,' &c. In framing that abominable oath, I don't believe that Sir Robert Peel cared one fig's-end whether the soul of a Catholic went up, after death, to the King of Brightness or descended to the King of Brimstone. His only aim seems to have been to secure to the Church by law established the full possession of the loaves and fishes." —Essays, 1st series, p. 19.

10

A long-protracted lawsuit between this artist and Prince Giustiniani has since attracted much public notice. On cleaning a painting apparently of little value, which he had purchased at a sale of the refuse of the prince's gallery, Signor Vallati detected traces of a superior production beneath that painted over it, on removing which, the long-lost duplicate of Correggio's Reading Magdalen was brought to light. A claim was now set up by Prince Giustiniani for the restitution of the picture, or payment of its full value: – but the cause, after being carried from one tribunal to another, was at last decided in favour of the right of Vallati to his prize.

11

A close analogy, according to this system, existed between pigs and humming-birds – each representing the gliriform type in their respective circles, and resembling each other in their small eyes and suctorial propensities! – See Swainson's Classification of Birds in Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopædia, i. 43.

12

"Mopso Nisa datur. Quid non speremus amantes?

Jungentur jam gryphes equis."

Virgil, Eclog. viii. 26.

13

A Popular and Practical Introduction to Law Studies, &c. &c. By Samuel Warren, Esq., F.R.S., of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-Law.

14

P. 71.

15

The following extract from a memoir of Lord Wynford, written evidently by a lawyer, manifests, in rather an amusing manner, the esprit de corps of the profession, and shows how the excitement of the contest between the advocates effaces the dull interest of what are called the merits of the case. Note how combative, how military, is the style: – "He (Lord Wynford) was a dangerous, because he was a most watchful and enterprising adversary. You could not any more sleep in his neighbourhood than could the Duke while Massena was near, though he might, in the neighbourhood of others, enjoy some repose. But if you never could be sure of his not making some venturous move himself, and were thus kept on the watch, so also you could not venture upon moves in the hope of his eyes being closed. It may almost safely be pronounced that he never failed to see or to profit by the slip of his adversary; to say that he never, seldom, made slips himself, would be very wide of the truth. In fact, he was not always a safe leader. Circumspect enough to see when his antagonist failed, he took a very narrow, or very one-sided, view of his own risks. Bold to rashness, hasty in his resolutions, quick in all his thoughts and all his movements, he was often in dangers wholly needless to be encountered; and though he would occasionally, by desperate courses, escape beyond all calculation from risks, both inevitable and of his own seeking, he could not be called a successful advocate." —Article on Lord Wynford, No. III., Law Review.